From Russia Today

‘S-300, S-400 air defenses in place’: Russian MoD warns US-led coalition not to strike Syrian army

Russia’s Defense Ministry has cautioned the US-led coalition of carrying out airstrikes on Syrian army positions, adding in Syria there are numerous S-300 and S-400 air defense systems up and running.

Russia currently has S-400 and S-300 air-defense systems deployed to protect its troops stationed at the Tartus naval supply base and the Khmeimim airbase. The radius of the weapons reach may be “a surprise” to all unidentified flying objects, Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson General Igor Konashenkov said.

From Russia Today

An Israeli Air Force pilot died on Wednesday as he ejected from his F-16 fighter jet upon returning from an airstrike mission in the Gaza Strip. The jet caught fire and crashed moments later outside Ramon Air Force base in southern Israel.

The pilot died while landing the jet on Wednesday evening, Anadolu news agency reported citing an army statement.

The aircraft was returning from an airstrike mission in which Israeli warplanes shelled several positions in Gaza after a rocket fired from Gaza territory exploded in Israel’s southern city of Sderot, the Israeli army said in a statement.

The plane was an F-16I two-seater jet fighter, also known as the “Storm,” which was specifically made for Israel by US-based Lockheed Martin. It had been in service with the IAF for over 10 years. The incident became IAF’s first fatality since 2010, when an F-16 crashed in southern Israel during a drill, killing both the pilot and navigator.

From Russia Today

‘1st victim of war is truth’: Syrian-born journalist slams MSM for Aleppo bias

A Syrian-born journalist has slammed the New York Daily News and the Independent newspaper for not accusing Syrian rebels of shelling areas belonging to government forces, lamenting that the MSM is not covering all sides of the war.

Harout Ekmanian was speaking to RT about his disbelief at the deliberate misreporting of the death of a Syrian swimmer and her 12-year-old brother.

Mireille Hindoyan and her younger sibling were killed in the Villi district of West Aleppo on Friday.

“I think the first victim of the war is the truth, especially in the Syrian war where journalism and journalists suffered a lot. Preserving impartiality has become a very difficult task for journalists,” he said.

The Russia-US peace effort in Syria broke down due to the lack of a unified stance on the issue in Washington and the US should acknowledge its failure, Maria Zakharova, Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told RT.

“The problem is that for the whole time we were involved in Russian-American negotiations… we realized very clearly that the US had no joint position. Different organizations, different structures in Washington were taking different positions on what’s going on Syria. They had absolutely different views,” Zakharova said.

The Americans “were changing their opinion and their point of view on what’s going on in Syria, actually, every day… Probably, that was the main reason why they failed in fulfilling those agreements that we achieved,” she added.

From PressTV

Syrian army liberates two more areas in troubled Aleppo

Fri Oct 7, 2016 12:0AM

Syrian government forces have managed to liberate two more areas in Aleppo from the clutches of foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants as they are trying to flush the extremists out of the strategic northwestern city.

A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the official SANA news agency that army units wrested full control over a number of buildings in the al-Sakhour neighborhood of Aleppo, located some 355 kilometers north of the capital Damascus, on Thursday after clearing the last pockets of terrorists in the area.

The source added that the government forces also retook al-Bureij region in northern Aleppo, leaving a large number of terrorists killed and injured.

Elsewhere in the southwestern province of Dara’a, Syrian army units and fighters from allied popular defense groups targeted the positions of the Takfiri Jabhat Fateh al-Sham militant group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the Dara’a al-Balad district of the provincial capital Dara’a, located about 90 kilometers south of Damascus, as well as al-Naimah village, killing and injuring scores of the Takfiris.

Syrian government forces are seen in an unknown location in the strategic northwestern city of Aleppo on October 6, 2016.

Syrian army soldiers and their allies also struck hideouts belonging to Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorists on the outskirts of Shaer and Jazal areas in the central province of Homs, destroying several arms depots and vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns.

Militant rocket fire kills eight Syrian civilians

In another development on Thursday, at least eight civilians, including two women and a child, lost their lives and nearly five dozen others sustained injuries in rocket attacks by foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants against two residential districts in Aleppo.Click here for the full story

From PressTV

Israeli tanks fire on besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip

Thu Oct 6, 2016 4:53PM

Israeli tanks shell the besieged Gaza Strip after an alleged rocket attack from the Palestinians in the coastal sliver targeted the occupied territories.

No casualties were reported from the Thursday attack, which was launched after Tel Aviv claimed a rocket had landed in an open area in the south of the occupied territories earlier in the day.

The tank shelling by Israeli forces targeted farmland east of Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday, Israeli tanks shelled an observation post belonging to the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, near the northern city of Beit Hanun.

Moreover, Israeli warplanes carried out two airstrikes in eastern Gaza Strip, while two other air raids hit the southern city of Khan Yunis and the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City in the coastal enclave’s north.

From Russia Today

Outrage as German far-right leader likens societies with migrants to ‘compost heaps’

The head of Germany’s anti-immigration AfD party Frauke Petry has compared a society incorporating migrants to a “compost heap,” triggering a barrage of criticism from the country’s politicians.Click here for the full story

From Russia Today

The spokesman for the US-led anti-ISIS coalition has said Turkish ground troops in Iraq are not acting as part of the alliance. Baghdad has called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting, saying Ankara is violating Iraqi sovereignty.

The statement came on Thursday from Col. John Dorrian, who is a spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), an anti-Islamic State coalition consisting of 65 countries.Click here for the full story

From Russia Today

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declares he will not bow to foreign pressure over his anti-drug campaign, while Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay declared that the US “has failed us.”

“I do not expect the human rights [groups], I do not expect Obama, I do not expect the EU to understand me,” said Duterte in a speech on Thursday. “Do not understand me. And if you think it’s high time for you guys to withdraw your assistance, go ahead. We will not beg for it.”

Duterte’s remark was made in response to mounting US and EU criticism of his war on drugs, which has led to over 3,600 deaths at the hands of police, drug gangs, and vigilantes, according to the latest figures from the Philippine National Police (PNP). Certain politicians, such as US Senator Patrick Leahy, suggested cutting off aid to the Philippines in September, but Duterte maintains that foreigners simply do not understand the scale of the drug problem in his country.

“You will never understand the pain that we are suffering,” he said. “Go away, bring your money somewhere else. We will survive as a nation. There will always be a day for reckoning.”Click here for the full story